Enormity Design Diary #4: Action Cards

In Enormity, you play the role of a NASF astronaut on a mission to the derelict ship, The Shepherd, lost to the void of space some years ago, now miraculously returned. In the previous dev diary (found here), I talked about your characters, the Spacers, and the stats that define them. I mentioned something called Action cards.

Action cards are used to perform actions, and actions are at the heart of Enormity’s gameplay: this is how you move, shoot, scout, scavenge, and more. Yet, Enormity is not a card game.

Let me explain.

Each Spacer gets Action cards. Three from their Character card and three from their current Suit. They then stack them together and place them into a single card sleeve to create 3double-sided Action cards.

You always stack a Yellow Character card with a Yellow Suit card. You always stack a Blue Character card with a Red Suit card. Yellow cards usually allow you to move and perform minor activities, Blue cards allow you to perform various specialized activities, while Red cards allow you to attack. Important: These pairs function as a single card, so you cannot use both sides of a given card during the same turn (unless…).

Each Character in Enormity will start with the same Action cards but, as they progress, gain experience and unlock new cards, as well as new Suits with new functionalities, a universe of unique builds will open up to them.

Each Spacer will get one turn, during which they will play up to 3 Action cards to perform various actions, like moving, attacking, scouting or scavenging. They will also perform other free actions and use Spacer abilities, including Stratagems.

With Enormity, we wanted to break with the move-and-shoot paradigm, and have your characters do more varied, exciting stuff. Between moving, shooting, reloading and rearming, you will be scouting enemies, security systems and Blips. You will be scavenging Gear Caches, engrams, interacting with consoles and hacking panels, you will be sneaking, you will even try to rationalize the things that are happening to you…

Some of these actions are adrenaline actions, some are not. Adrenaline actions raise your Adrenaline and allow you to leave Spacer tokens… some, like catching your breath, will simply allow you to survive just a bit longer.

Once your Spacer lives long enough to become seasoned, they will gain access to even better actions, including reactions and an overwatch action you perform during the Invader turn…

 You will take them, because you will need them.

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